IP Intelligence
Patent Criticalities
The things that quietly decide whether an invention can be protected - explained before they cost you anything.
Showing 21 of 56.
Nobody wrote down who owns it
An invention belongs to its inventors unless something in writing moves it. Filing in the company's name does not by itself transfer anything. Ownership defects are …
Your specification does not support your claim
You can only claim what you described. When an examiner cites prior art and the obvious answer is to add a limitation you never wrote down, there is nothing to amend…
Nobody asked the Patent Office to look at it
An Indian patent application is not examined unless someone files a request and pays for it. If the request is not filed in time, the application is treated as withd…
The invention is new - and still not patentable
Indian law has a filter that operates completely independently of novelty and inventive step. Section 3 lists things that are not inventions at all - and something c…
Why a good invention still gets a Section 3 objection
A section 3 objection is a subject-matter objection, and it is answered by evidence and framing rather than by arguing about the prior art. Each clause has its own t…
Your claim is broader than your invention
Breadth is not free. Every extra millimetre of claim scope pulls in more prior art and demands more disclosure to support it. A claim that reaches beyond what you ac…
The description is thinner than the claim needs
A patent is a trade: a monopoly for a teaching. If the teaching would not let a competent person in your field reproduce the invention across the width of the claim,…
Searching once, at the wrong moment
Most organisations search once, just before filing, and treat the result as a verdict. Searching is more useful when it is treated as a repeated activity with a diff…
The wrong people are named as inventors
Inventorship is not authorship, seniority or reward. It is a factual question about who devised the invention **as claimed** - and because claims change during prose…
Nobody decided what the priority date was for
Priority is not a property of your application. It attaches, claim by claim, to whatever was fairly disclosed in the filing you are relying on. Treating it as a sing…
The application is in the wrong name
The applicant is who will own the patent. Getting it wrong affects fee category, chain of title, who can sue, and what an investor sees in diligence - and correcting…
The invention exists but the record does not
A patent can only be as good as what the drafter was given. Where the technical record is a slide deck and a conversation, the specification ends up thin, the altern…
The danger of filing too early
Filing early is usually right. Filing before there is anything to describe is not. A premature application starts clocks - twelve months to a complete specification,…
Filing abroad first, without permission
A person resident in India may not apply outside India for a patent without written permission from the Controller, unless an application for the same invention was …
The twelve months that decide your international position
Twelve months from your first filing, you must either file in each country you care about, or file a PCT application that preserves the option. There is no third cho…
Somebody is reading your published application
Publication makes your application visible to everyone who competes with you. In some industries, opposition is a routine part of the landscape rather than an except…
Why enablement and support are different objections
Support asks whether the claim is fairly based on what you described. Enablement asks whether a skilled person could actually perform it across the claim's width. Th…
The divisional you could no longer file
A divisional application must be filed before the parent is granted. That is a moving target you do not control - and it is the single most common way that valuable …
The application that died on paperwork
Substantive objections get the attention. Formal ones end just as many applications, because they carry the same deadline and are easy to leave until last.
The data you did not generate
In chemistry, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and food technology, several of the objections you will face can only be answered with comparative data. If nobody gener…
The form that can revoke a patent
Section 8 requires you to tell the Indian Patent Office about corresponding applications filed abroad. It is administrative, it is easy to overlook in a large family…
This is the Ragulika IP Educational Criticality - our own editorial prioritisation device, to help you decide what to read first. It is not a legal score, it is not calculated from your facts, and it says nothing about the strength of any particular application.
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Educational guidance, not legal advice. This material is published by Ragulika IP for general education and information. It is not legal advice, it does not create a professional-client relationship, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own facts. Patentability, infringement, prosecution strategy and every other IP outcome turn on the specific facts and on the law and Patent Office practice as they stand at the time you act. Please take professional advice before making a decision, and read the underlying provision or judgment before relying on any point stated here.